


Yoo Dee Bee

by NullBubby



Category: Kirby (Video Games)
Genre: Flashbacks, Gen, Rewrite, crazy captor dude is crazy, kid magolor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:55:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29099151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NullBubby/pseuds/NullBubby
Summary: In the darkest notes of rock and relegated sanity, a caring, an afraid, and a dizzy find themselves among the subground. Behind a mirror and a spark for despair, wherever they are, they'll find a way home, somehow.A rewrite of one of my previous works,Upside Down Below.





	1. Brilliant Buoys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waking a nap in the jumble.

Everything was going nicely at first. Drowsing, simply, forming highest disregard of needs that hardly seeked attention, and otherwise promoting somnolence. Perhaps, eyeing the virtual rear a moment, there may have been some... lessened ideals, by negligence of the hour, but there lay scarcely a need to consider the such. Regarding the moment, all must’ve performed as faultlessly as any past.

So what _required_ be wrong for the moment?

In regrettable fact, the evening prevailed nothing tailored to her indispensables. The beneath held bleak, almost as if her sheets scrimped to dissimilar, yet indifferent metal, the airiness much the same uncomfortable frigidness, her shape held unparallel to any surface, her shying breath seeming almost frosted from indifference. To simply state, it was inexcusably unsatisfactory—yet without the blink of an eye, she merely shuddered another pant to her pillow.

Perhaps, if to stretch description, it was simply the ajar window crying awfully to the night. Tattered, might likely, it’d hardly been inspected for much any span recallable—regardless its defined interest at all, the land was certainly chilled throughout the latter hours. Merely a misconduct of the very sheets she slept on, or, as hated to admit, an aftereffect of neglect to shut entirely. Quite... dissimilar, in any regard of understanding, though not implausible.

In the wretched silence, she bulked her grip, readjusted a fist, and nuzzled her pillow all an instant for how silken she could never warp it to forget. For all then, she just churned with the hollow holding cavity, felt one last time the twitch and easiest texture of her grandest, softest, and most soothing appliance of anything, and sighed a last to her personal pad, scrunching it to maintain all her last warmth.

All swell—almost in vague eye of certainty—barely to some tentative comfort, all for the half a moment she let slip the wriggle of comfort absolute. The threat hummed its own falling monotone, perfectly setting all departments necessary to shove some sense in, finally, but she just sighed back and squished her pillow even more.

And suddenly, the squeak arrived as exactly the unforgettable obscurity necessary to knock a fog from the clouds.

Her eye broke open—the other too pressed to care—met to the spiral of a shadow, and at last, the breeze returned, sighed across. In a hurried jolt, her hand fell to the turbulence of the skies above her improvised eyeshade, but she was hardly concerned for more than rubbing her face simple again.

The simplest fact—it was _too_ warm. Hardly so as she’d wished, but as an absolute, her oversized cushion almost shedding its body into its captor, she blinked an expression, sobbed another breath to the bulk of the blurry world, and stared, long and open into the distinct pallor of sunrise so wrong.

Rest assured for her pillow, she glimpsed a last warmth with a palm, pushing herself up, into the landscape of cold, dark—at the precise moment of light’s edge. Wobbling, she immediately thrusted a palm to the ground, only to wince as soon at the frost. She snuck another breath, scrambled a hand, and dropped a knuckle forward; though the wind was so close, so breathtakingly indeterminate, sucking, she just collapsed.

The hardest squeak—a droning thump—she could only stare so lifelessly toward the tranquil moment. With the last mind of strength, her head lifted, saw the perfect opportunity of the round, and breathed back into her stuffed sheet. One hand twitched, the other in tiered turmoil, but with the polar zephyr to lull so intently, she just sagged. She reached, back, down to her inventory, only for lost comfort to revive in the worst moment.

By some self-miscommunication or other solely, she just stroked, soothed, and tickled her pillow, however regretfully, obliviously, or disdainfully to her own sense of sleep. Time by an instant, soon an hour, her eyes dripped, seething above how enormously cozy her cushion lay, cradled beneath her head and the freezing air, simply. Dispute as she’d wished, she needed hardly a reason to conflict the passing dreamscape, frost sparks in the air—as much blatant as the first noticeable bound of the underground—and she dozed.

The rest lay at least appreciable for all the moment until the dawn of a shudder so much greater, colder, and, in some indistinct regard, feeble. Her eyes burst, exploded back between chill and nigh light, and as sudden, her hands trembled without her. She lifted wholly, trailing the last fingers across her wobbly pillow, and, by turn of an instant, a blink, and a flinch, she gazed down to the unfathomable drowned blue—prone as any shadowy rock to peripheral.

Her pillow whimpered once more, then twitched, lifted an external pallor before its front. Gawking, fumbling around the desolate rock face lining the beneath of them both, the hand stood, only to sigh its last and collapse again, an eased sigh returning. She followed in breath, dropped her eyes, and stood, at last, as nothing among the chasm.

Nigh indescribable—her first conclusion—not due to any sole regard, the exponentialized shadows crushed worlds in finding any solid face beside the core. Shallow crags, a sodded outer ring, all to speculation she guided something like breaths synthesized with blankness to the mooned shadows and inanimate creatures of the vaguely dome-shaped gloom. She just rotated for whole seconds, winded by the pale breeze, then, patting her incorrect outfit of nothing, shielded her eyes for the imminent rise to first certainty.

Immediately as the ceiling saw back to her, a high shattering echoed from rear, only to face extinction in a merest beat. Before the first blink she only stood, silent in the unalterable position she’d last lost her head into, then a feigned warmth broke loose—an impetus braved for her. The wind brushed with its own dearly meaningless intent, timed and tested for patience itself, but as all a slap of air it just pushed her hair and sighed back. However eased, however misintended her face must’ve appeared to the band that couldn’t even see, she concluded beyond mind; in the faintest sign of a shadowy shape, all suddenly bothered was a stare back.

With all the precaution she minded for, she collapsed to the ground beside her sheer pillow, expelled a breath, and dripped her face to the sign of conflict. Dark as damageable, the faces of a backhand, blue, and breathlessness drew near, though nothing as so the parasite overseeing it all. She stood, herself, picked a hand around the shape barely half her height, and stuck a grip to the spongy blob.

The first tug was as doubtlessly futile as aggressive. After a whole second more in sight of her seize, she dropped her palms back to cold air. Both tumbled to the ground, the mellower blue falling hands lower, limper by the instant. Immediately, she felt back the squish of the parasite’s smooth skin—by the pat of some youthful palms against the ground, the time reminded. She dropped it, again, scrambling one formation of fingers behind another, trying a press, a push, a brute power against the tightest leech’s strangling of the trapped eyes beneath, but ultimately, she came to the last conclusion of a vexed breath, mixed waters of her own form of moments past, and a final, futile struggle for dominion over eyesight.

By some unanswerable miracle, the blue blob exploded off, nigh perpendicularly to its host for the sole second she savored her attention. A dart thumping the air of rear, she hushed to a curious pant. Though its chest was too dampened by darkness for distinguishability, she snuck a finger, a palm all the way to the faint patterns and drowned shades of its garments. Ever-smooth, as perfectly envisioned of the past, for an instant her wish to shut her eye atop its smooth form almost resurfaced sincere. A path drew atop the lump without guidance, some line of how smooth and simultaneously chilled it lay over the cavern floor, while it soaked some air to its stomach.

A sudden shiver, a flinch, and a whimper—by conclusion to the indefinite second tailed, she lay back, seated, trembling on balance and breath herself as the spectacle suffocated some more among the shadows. Coughing, first, then choking, a hand parted barely enough into the light for visual; it splayed, thrashed against the floor of the fossilized air as she nearly collapsed. Instants, seconds, she must’ve verged the lack herself by sight alone, the vaguely ellipsoid shadow stumbling from the ground, breaking balance, and crashing back with a last sputter.

She watched, blinked, whispering to the silence. Once, twice, beyond, she stared through the coatings of every whatnot, somewhere into the core of a stellar ray, rounded, trapping the sole pillow of the past in its cage of sight. The crags cried their hollow melody, tearing drops to plops all anywhere not hers, and she suddenly groped the shallow plantlife holding her. As lifeless and unseeable as it was, it carried her breath after the entirety of seconds she lasted.

Somewhat intricate, could be said first for the figure’s linings. Wheezing, dropping, it made difficulty in attempting recognizability—the mere fact wasn’t her interest, regardless. She dropped through the frontier of plantlife and pallor, to some press of her fingers into her own palm, then all the way into the blindness. For all her breath could still be strained, the dweller even looked to some degree of live, in first notice of its face.

Almost warming, its closed, cozied pair of blank eyelids reflected as; by time of its looking back, its eyes shone enormously. Another gasp flew, then immediately backed, the scant face parting farther from her palms, down the slightest bump of the center of the pit, and off into the opposite void, whimpers, all the way. Before dropping even her own posture, it cried again, flailed a hand around in its choked pattern, then slumped to expressionlessness all around.

She nearly paused a breath to see its scant puffs the tightest sliver more, but its sole illuminated backhand spoke enough in its position otherwise. Sighing—straying some sound the same herself—a finger extended to the hush of the sobby air, pulling frost and warmth down simultaneously to the unfathomable package of an appendage so similar. Nearer, a breath dropped, her other hand splayed ahead of her face, and finally, she scuffed the grounds of the mirror of its palm. A fire of frigid, it immediately called as, she almost couldn’t let go its tiny edges and frail shivering.

The platform was as soft and smooth as the rest of itself, so much so she hardly noted its floorward pants before the first scurry returned. Her hand dropped as a blue so equally minute to its own reach tore into the light—scraped clothing in line, golden eyes appearing almost to belong to nocturnality—wheezing again, crying harder with the force of breath exclusively into the ground before her. It collapsed again, only to lift its face to the skies, whimper some more, and scrunch its hands into its chest, hyperventilating to the sole onlooker of fused confusion.

The culprit was only imminent; a hopping gazer of the spelunked squished its roundish body with every step, looming from the veiled outer ring. Her hands parted immediately, down, level to the bare rock lining the beneath, around the lifeless silken entity to her ground, and lifted into the air. Backing, she fumbled a readied grip somewhere to her rear, an unmoving breath signaling all cold to the cave, but nothing returned her request. A squint adorned her, and by the time her hand had scrambled into place, she was tumbling.

Toward the ground, somehow she turned however much enough to sop the pressure to herself. She panted with the collision—a whimper coinciding—but for all any noise stung, her eyes only kept on the approach. One last time, she fought for inventory, wherever it was, though all left in her command was a softest, smoothest pillow imaginable.

A puff, a drop, and at last, a brace, she scrunched her breathless cushion, an eye lost between transmission of darkness. The thudding reigned, cheered itself around; higher, a creeping whip flung to the skies, crying its own song of spit and inexplicable sound. One more squish, her whole body shivered from hold itself, and she blinked.

The final stare was fairly aimless, in least regard.

She broke her eye a moment more from her crushed cushion. A parasite stood the ground before, goggly-eyed and blank in its stiff-styled wave of sheer steel, secreting noticeable saliva each span of seconds it stood. In its first blink, it sagged, roping its tongue down to its own head, and gazed the ground. Before its googly stare, she could almost recall her eyes to their smooth subcavern and twist some breaths back out, among the rather peculiar spectacle it appeared to be attempting.

Even passive, neutral, at minimum, the creature impressed as. Spinning, endlessly, its eye and gaping tongue sparred with the silence every fling of its spit it shaped back around with, a lifeless pair of eyes to nevertheless remind of a smile soon to lack beneath its front. Nothing stylish, nothing remotely considerable, the sudden task seemed merest comparable to the jitters spawning from her hold.

With a struggled support, ill keeping her entire extended form accurate to balance, she finally glimpsed. Precise as was regrettable, still, the deep rocks, green, and juts of round emphasized in something, sulking in silence. The breeze rushed with a shiver in conjunction, a skip of rear imminent, though for focus, she lay adrift. Around, nearing her bulk’s lower tip, her hand suddenly stopped, scrunched, and sank, again, almost feeling the true climate of void.

Drowning somewhere, more, she sat to the far reverberations, the frown approaching. She sought a midst of soothy something, perhaps, but her own pillow just stared somewhere, indifferent. Harder, louder, the caverns echoed back, a dome of twisted truth—she couldn’t bear reinspect her own inventory—and a wheezing spoke back to it. First... unintelligible, so disorienting she just shook her head and rubbed it with her sheet, next breathtaking, but she didn’t even mind.

“Well _you_ guys ain’t much the talking bunch, are ya’?”

Hardly, she even noticed the impending spoke of a blob prodding her from level stature; it was a whimper, of all things, to distract her.

She was upright in another second, extra caution ensured for her hold to remain admissibly afloat. Panting, herself, she turned to the sag of an odd face so devastated beneath her, the round ground of pale light and its nonexistent beyond, and finally, the gaze of darkness. Somewhere, she could feel the gusts returning, torching the silence with chill breaths of their own, but nowhere, the otherworldly, almost cosmic formation of first sound lightened any sense of hers.

“Over here, ya’ dingus,” the voice mirrored of somewhere in the rear, but she turned to find nothing. A few stutters and sudden syllables sequenced in the seconds succeeding. “Eh, fine. Since ‘parrently _I_ gotta be the one doin’ this stuff ‘round here.”

An unequal sigh broke of somewhere in the shadowed sidelight. Staring, soon backing, slightly, she turned her eyes anywhere fathomable of the general front, squishing her hold the slightest more as breath continued sparking in, out, and lost, infinitely. Seconds spanning, a sudden gleam spoke from the rock, high, dull, yet piercing in some inexplicable nature—crystal echoes. Louder by moments, the solidification only scraped following, nigh the point of discomfort by its finale, and with a merer pant, a broken spy, the air lashed forward, so hard it trued winces by its calling.

Virtually everlasting, the wind brushed before as, but the shield of her palm stood so much longer. Whether to merely silence herself, shush her held being of its nothing gasps, or whatnot else, she couldn’t faintly describe, gazing in through the core of an only light, silent skies, and wings of uncertainty.

“Shadow Marx!”

A face sunk into its palm beside. She could hardly move, herself, but even relatively she was a statue to the blob’s even bob.

“Yeah, whaddya want now?” the winged figure huffed, tilted face to his side.

The perfectly curved figure just continued a facepalm, and finally sighed. “You neglected the beginning of your opening sentence.”

“Then why din’cha tell me that before, hmm?”

“I am a subordinate, not a seer, sir.”

“‘Ay! Don’t you... call me that!”

The grayed ovoid just bowed, slightly, drooping his hands to his chest in a fashion almost reminiscent. Backing, himself, his gaze faded into the slightest shadows as golden wings spared the rest of the breeze forward.

“You seein’ that?” His jester hat drooped as he turned back upward. “Man, just trying some opening stunt for some specials here, then _he’s_ gotta come along and bat me for it.”

He turned, popped his tongue to his sole company at level. Again, only met with a backhand and audible exasperation, he twisted back, surveyed the landscape—all a giant grin eager with something like a drooly wave—then dropped his smirk back to the only weight it’d been momentarily known.

“Yeah, what’s it now with _you_?”

It must’ve only seen nonchalance in the skies of forward, slapping its tongue against the specks of abyss itself before a mouth so carelessly gaping. Droplets rained, soon, alongside scrapped trails in the air, bright buoys from the stars; she flinched far enough in some sole, distant travel. Floaty, fluent, they journeyed, the blob journeyed, adventuring forward toward the face of shade until an unfathomable flinch quieted the whole spectacle.

“‘Ay!” he barked, face back. “Servant! Get this little slobby-er outta here!”

There was nothing. The blue creature just sagged, and scooted off—by some mark of the moment, it was the mindless motion, of all things, to restore the first warmth. A face’s rear crying out in such the whine it seemed only he’d ever possess, she finally stared. Far, where only a sphere and a shadow purged the pallor, she could almost see some distant shape forming in a mirrored hand, like a handle, a pulser, the steadily rearing illusion behind a faded suit. Reachable, doubtless, the only obstacle in her path stood the only stare back to her.

She blinked with the careful rub of an eye, then the other. All light patch and the cavity scurried back, against her with two gazes of vague and varying indifferences, but the only pulse it seemed was left lay in her very hold.

The winged one glanced up from the exact frigid panting. “He always like that?”

She glimpsed a narrow breath, traveling her eyes from the floor to the only face above.

“I can hear that all the way over here, you really not care?”

Turning, beyond the face, she just whispered nothingness to herself. In tune with breath only, she shifted back, expended another moment more in the futile silence of her only expressionlessness in hold, and finally parted gaze. The whole scene squished before dampened curtains, and, dropping a hand from the superabundant sighs of her portable cocoon, an entire eye reformed the enigma of its hand-patterns—she felt back to inventory, snagged the first trace of solid anywhere, and drowned before her aim, a second flinch of anything.

All at once, everything had stalled. Her pillow hushed in a final gasp, its floating doppelganger simultaneous with the sudden lack of hands, but her sole target was the only one existing—a bloated blob escaped the wrath, somehow, but she just stalked among the ice. Hardly, it mattered to her the feel, the weight, anything perception stated so blatantly wrong about her dearest pointer of the moment. Just the silencing gaze was all left of her, and her mind for even it had expired.

“You have exactly ten seconds to begin explaining yourselves and your intent before I set this weapon to mark seven and blast your entire wing off. Timed now.”

With a smirk, a giggle too sudden, then stark fangs enveloping the gawk of his mouth, he just laughed. A breath exploded before her, somewhere a goo resounding its melody of bounds again, and suddenly, she’d lost the sense of silence.

“Oh?” the pinpointed face cried from above. “What’s this? The _girl_ , of all of you, is the one standing up to me?”

He bounded in his station, laughing before little anything beside a signature sigh and something like a faint click against the cavern echo. For moments, seconds, whatnot beyond, she stared so deeply; she could only see time clocking, lurking right behind him.

“Match me impressed!” He chuckled a good several more seconds. “Y’know,” he said, verging what looked another hysteric in the eye of a pistol, “I just recently had someone like you, here. She tried the same thing! ‘Course, there was a shebang to be done, but she _really_ wasn’t going without a fight. Oh, and I stole all your stuff, too. Keep trying stuff like that, I may just have a new jester to class.”

Her squint fell, more so to an imminent sigh of herself than determination. “I do believe you quite misunderstand the definition of your words. Now, answers, please.”

“Still so sure of yourself?”

He reared what looked half a step for himself, his face following. With only an expected slap to return, he tilted back with a samey grin, perfectly plausible eyes almost woozy.

“Wanna do the honors?”

The gray-cloaked one echoed himself, then approached from the nigh of shadow. Instantly, she shifted her grip, tilting, flinching it a few times between the two until finally settling on the eyes more aimless than unfazed. He bowed, grasped his thumbs from their spots over his stomach, then lowered, barely.

“I suggest you provide your handheld arm a thourougher inspection, ma’am.”

She just tightened her balance and scrunched her pillow once more. Against the face of a wobbly pistol, the gray eyes just blinked, long, intently, then hovered back to their prior position.

“Man,” the wings droned from the side, “even _she_ wasn’t so dense. You’re holding a hunk of wood right now, you know that?”

In texture, she’d long noted something, but only with the next faint of her cushion did anything resonate beyond the frame shielding her consciousness. She felt a finger around the grip, the trigger, anything she could recall—all as intact, meticulously designed as another, if not a bit much convex around the barrel—a first cold seeping in by mere touch alone. Bursting with quality, seeming with design, color, shape, smoothness, everything, the foolish tool stared her back with the eye of a lacking logo, filling by laughably distinct imperfection; she turned it so many times with the opportunity of silence standing before her. Tainted, entirely, almost... to the brim of fury.

By next instant, her hand raised behind her own head, a target seeked, locked by the stupid grin on his deep gray face, and flung back, down, then all around again, hurling in direct path toward eyes still oblivious to the impending weight. It spun, thrashed against the air itself—she squished all any sense of heat she had left of herself, her very pillow into the whirlwind of the soaring decoy by stare alone—and by first, most luscious sound, her squint sweetened.

However armored his scales may have appeared, he flinched, barely still under line of fire. He instantly refaced with a sharp hiss, an exact inducement of a whimper and a prevailing whine, then an explosion of a monstrous grin so unfathomably forbidding. Lurching back to a statue above ground, a shrill terror intended and missed entirely, he sputtered some cosmic enigma, sparred with sound one last time, then disappeared behind the mere coating of a sheathed spotlight. With one more facepalm, a shrug, his only other approached from the darkness for a last groan of some sort, snapped his fingers, then disappeared the very same.

Then it was quiet, at last. Still, she couldn’t feign drop of her searing breath, her mind, so meticulously bent on one last scorch of anything she could find her hands to. A crazed look, she must’ve held, grim, laughable, but none of it mattered. If just to settle her last breaking squint on something alive, nothing would alter her decision—all, somehow, until a lesser quiet, somewhere among the subground.

It was her pillow, blinking, for once, shivering even noticeably among her hold. Each second pant of its carrier, it whined, shook again, until finally, it noticed the pallor of her exterior—the true char of eyes so scrunched and shaped—and sobbed. Inexplicably, she just watched, silenced after a faint, falling gasp. Not anything that she understood what it was, its intent, its doing, even, she saw straight into the darkness where its face once stood, but all still remained was the rock fossil of its cavern.

She seated herself, equally cold and vigorous as it, blank confusion. Hardly, there lay need to see into it, but she couldn’t look away. It was empty. Weightless. To provoke mere decency back to the air, she could’ve simply tossed it back into the gape of darkness; its immense smoothness couldn’t yet faze her touch. That she still held it at all should’ve stood the greatest mystery, but in a sudden cold, a sweat in her palm, the gooey mess wandering in its endless circle disappeared alongside everything.

She raised her grip, held it upright, leaning against herself, but it just continued its sorrowful expression, dropping tears every moment it still existed alongside her. Even, she stared the great smoothness of its head, the cheek between its elongated ears, but in simplest reality, she truly saw nothing in it. In regrettable fact, she didn’t even mind her gravitation of the droplets, the nonexistent face of whatever eyes so faint and hollow before; she just tilted her head to the moonlight through the only hole in the roof, contemplating alongside a distant confusion and a specimen she’d somehow roped herself into.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any feedback is always well-appreciated. If I made any grammatical mistakes, feel free to let me know.


	2. Exhaust Haze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Through the halls and out the memorial drawl, a hex spitter bides in the dark clouds.
> 
> There's nowhere to go.

It was extensively frigid.

Above the unwilting underbrush and all else captive to the cavernous crags, she served the only neglect of the subterranean climate. With a sole hand, she grasped the spokes of the air, the other perched with softness to silence; the grass, hardly needing it, pleaded so dearly to the one who didn’t care for some strayed drips. That she needed feel the stark surface stood the least of concerns for the moments against sheerness—by constrained shivers, faintest reflections of the moonlight, there was a formula among the unknown.

It was only certain—her basis had stooped to sheer guesswork on the matter, but there was no other option. By another blink, she could see the glade of the yawning dome, some crude flooring, the specks of cracks and impressions spiring either half an instant to the crust or deep into some magmatic enigma, all, of course, without the switch of her head. There was a rock to be exposed, and she _was_ pinpointing it.

Her hand darted between juts, across the shortest stone plains, by each ridge of the corner she came across—all the while, her hair breezed in quite the least relaxation it was, ever. Her grip swished, shied of looseness several times among the scant breath she paid it with, but her carry-on was no match for the single palm rested along its silken back. She couldn’t even care to look down a smidge to tell its short-lived whispers to the onlookers so equally nonexistent, for if she dared see such a futile cavern again, she’d have more likely lost herself against another stare to the eternal night.

Her hair flew again. With another purr from the frozen draft, she breached along a faint corner of the inner crag, and sighed. Her creature winced the slightest, absorbing her entire breath, though it returned to stiff shivers, soon, as she groped the next bridge of darkness. The air roared against her back again, even more ferociously in the slight pat it brought to its affliction. She stopped, suddenly, and turned to the spotless patch of the path she’d been tracing. On the farthest outskirts, a blobby bounding reigned among the silent stimulation.

It seemed even realistic, she noted, turning back—only for that instant, even, before seeing open. Surely, the tingling must’ve said worlds in whatever complex she’d lost herself among, though with its deep, almost glowy goggle faced into her, barren eyes, she paid no mind to the last seconds or so she’d just expended into the mindless sensation.

Among the pallid light reflecting its scathed attire, its stare was stark.

Its head flew back to her own subground upon a click and a initialization of rock grating. With another flop of its head, it shook, shifted away, leaving itself as far from her as it could among her grasp—truthfully, she could hardly note a difference in her hold. Somewhere, a block and a blue face frizzled and grated among the damp deepness, but before the unheard squirm of her specimen, it fizzled.

The sole cragface finally completed its crumble from some far corner. Her glance felled upon the relative shade, somewhere, a moment to lie as the soggy tongue responsible rose from its planed rock undersheathing, skipped a whole half its bodily height toward the invisible ceiling, and flew, droning its mess of tears behind every pat toward the new opening among the wall. She could barely recognize what it’d even done, truthfully.

With another peek toward her trembly dweller—its eye desperately hung between the last tips of her hair—she dismissed the unspoken presence, and followed the blobby being’s last tangible step from the cold-cored chassis of whatever excavation so primitively deficient, somewhere into the new, narrow darkness.

She nigh struck stillness at the slender air. A squeak murmured of the farther underground, again, though she could hardly recall whether it was a first for herself or it. She gazed it, its shivery ears—the endless hall of eternal flames spiring from their stands along the scant brick walls, all the way into a vertical slab. The blob, frankly, didn’t care, and just hopped right by the impediment, into invisibility.

She nearly hesitated upon the end of the corridor. Stark into a shallow pillar, a spiked breeze bumbling from beyond another forever of torchlights, she lost, retook a breath at the first sight. Without another spared moment, she brushed the breeze, heading by the first central pillar of the dilated hallway.

Truthfully, she was nothing shocked or startled of the rusted metals, the bruised bars piercing the winds into their eternal home—however primitively criticizable, she could bear a meager glance, at most. The shivers grazing her palms and the sheer face of her outfit, her eyes wandered along the dustway, one cell upon another stacked, laterally, one box beside the next looming beyond unfazed tradition, forever.

The blob kept bursting across the opposing end of the cages until finally, bumped into a dim pillar twelve times too many, it strayed. Her grip nearly tumbled by the approach, but it was nothing of its aura, she was certain—one unfathomable peek away, her carried kept breaking shivers, so hard she almost felt a difference since leaving the dome-room. Its face plunged into nothing, it felled its winds to the air, shying slightest breezes by its beneath; somehow she couldn’t look away for all it panicked.

With a frown, the googly face skipped into the abyss; seconds, minutes, she held the unsubsiding shudders. She swished against the shadow’s habitat. Dark clouds littered, the limitless essences holding each their burning pledge, she, for once, almost felt to wave a hand beneath her face. With an inward breath, she started down, into the only line where torches didn’t dwell.

A first instant into the narrowest strip, a cold plating fell over her. The air immediately fretted its will across—a wince and a shield of eye the most of its infliction—but she started beyond the chill. Shivers slipped nigh, breezing by each breath of the desolate exhibition, but for all she noticed, her grip was tight on her only pillow. Far, yet simultaneously tangible as the dawn of her own lifelessness, the first touch of new light taunted behind the miniscule patch she still found herself among, but she just trailed the first dense spark, however mindlessly.

It was no colder than among the shadow’s band, yet she almost felt ready to sigh all the breath she’d neglected, after the briefest journey—then spoke a monstrous metal screech. Her head was so instantly tight with coldness she nearly started for her inventory at the sound. Her held quaked quite more so than the precise moment prior, pants by every wandering blink her own; she couldn’t help but miss the point of the entire spectacle drooling at her from its sudden explosion from the dark. It took no long to notice the veiled blue responsible for such a startle, but for all the moments she lingered behind the very end of the walkaway, she was befuddled on its doing.

Without another skipped beat, the blob hopped from ahead the only creaking cell, garnering another whimper as it started into the truest finale of blighted light—a planked door so great and looming to the hall barely twice her height. The gate croaked to the nudge of a tongue, then lay silent for the rest of the bounds toward immediate unknown.

The steps loomed of beneath as she rose the whole moment into the face of the doorway. A breeze swiftly shushed the opportunity at her slightest lean; the rightmost of the duo of doors clicked shut, suddenly. She poked her face toward her beneath—the being’s head still lost, rigid beside her—then the spiring gate, then the whole hall past until nearly dizzying herself. The only torchlight served from seconds back, yet she latched a palm over the sunken handle unerred, all the traces of containments listed to nowhere in mind as she started into the new dome. The gate thudded behind her.

She was blinded by the instant fog. She raised a hand, inexplicably, her eyes wincing as she attempted notice of any sort of surroundings under the dimmest lit dark. Her hand looped between her forehead and her grasped, so many times, sparse flames tearing from the dull distance, but she just mistook a look behind herself and fell into the colder abyss.

A stiff spoke, a rising plate, the rugged floor sighed before the brushes of the wind, crying a name every moment she stared forward. The springing rained from all corners of the hollow, one instant a breeze swished, another a pebble slipped across the scantly smooth floor, all the way to the vague tip of noticeability by motion alone. So stamped in silence, outright indifferent, she stopped, nigh the tiniest plateau of a rock palm, and stood the inevitable tests of all else sighing a title together—one with the darkness, a grain skipped before her, zagging so close she soon lost it behind her horned shadow.

The first crack spoke so suddenly, distinct enough to each form and line across the swerving fissure—the rest following in suit soon enough to force a wince out of her. The outlines of ears drew, then its corresponding rings, then blues, a gooey stare, dripped from its dizzy abyss, suddenly the brink of a light so bright she needed rear as a burst felled from its celestial skies.

“Gah!”

A horrible breeze chilled across her eyes, though she didn’t need to raise her hand to recognize the only face who hexed vexation.

“Wait, wait—just hold up a second. You guys ain’t s’posed to be here. Nuh-uh.”

A similar sigh broke of the higher skies. Without what looked half a care for the morphing drone aboard the wings’ captor, the subordinate slithered back, his palm strapped to his face.

“You guys miss me that much, or _what_? Be more than glad to serve to ya’, if all you wanted was—”

He barely slipped away from the same hurling blaster in time to keep himself unscathed. After staring the decoy to the ground, he refaced with another shrill, a tireless squint among the only stare toward him.

“Keep it down, will ya’?” he barked.

“I will not be tolerating your likeness scarcely among my audience.”

He gawked for all an instant before her hair swayed and her grip tightened. “It’s Shadow Marx! C’mon, gimme—”

Shadow Marx held his mouth ajar, then drooped, slightly.

“What kind of audacity is that? Think you’re a _boss_ around here, or something? Lemme a _break_ —you’re under this roof, and you’re _nothing_ a standout from your very kind, y’know that? What’d you think you was doing, tryna’ escape from where I left you? No, no, you were just supposed to live in that little-bitty dome forever and ever, and you’d get hungry for all the rest of your lives, and you’d go crazy or something, and—”

“If you may pardon the interruption,” the subordinate said, sliding from his bold shadow, “might I reiterate that you promised to decommission your secreted switch among several prior occasions?”

He whirled aback. “I was gonna get to that!”

“You were going to do it yesterday.”

“Well, uh...” Shadow Marx swished his wings around, fronted, his huff nigh indiscernible among the stretch of his glimpse. “Anyway! Since you guys are _dying_ to see me so much, I guess I can let you some of the ‘special treatment’, hmm? Nice you got your kiddo here for this, too, ‘cause the ride’s gonna be all the best.”

Her hair faced another breeze. Among the silence, she nearly recognized the greatening shivers sighing over her—its consequent whimpers and mumbles screeching, all the way.

The subordinate drooped his face and reared as Shadow Marx pointed his cheek forward.

“Man, I know this place inside n’ out, and where you guys coming from ain’t far—but what’s up with _him_ , hmm? He a block of ice, or what? _You_ a block of ice? What kind of little mess did you guys even freeze yourself with? Jeez, I mean, I’m not _all_...”

A finger darted once more into its deepest confine, then felled as far forward as he could reach—strung all the way across the distance between both of the pallid sky without so much a sigh to coincide with his unearthly stretch. The length was only inevitable, but in all the blink and chore of a pressing weight upon her forehead, she only barely saw the haze of two murky faces, clouding from the high skies, roaming from each their nightly stall.

It was so damp and dark, looking into the pale strike of ears facing her back. Intangible to the drips, the mist of a zigging droning, a scorchingly exasperating tone, it churned, it waggled alongside the whole swirling face of itself—only a mudded breeze scribbling across the dizzying skies as her head fell from its own cosmos, plunged into the blue moon keeping her hands aligned, her eyes lost.

* * *

Or, perhaps, a deeper satellite would suffice. Certainly, there was some impellent to scouring some one-off craters, decrepit seas yet untainted, pleading glances by every sweep across the stars. If, only, to see some sedimented grounds—if to once take a hand, scrubbed from its machinal dispensing undeterred, and sigh it over some vaguely discernable pales—there were metals to be expended. There were plethoras of faceless gazes apt for any duty, even. Such a mild investment, it was only what _purpose_ it’d ever have, regardless...

A broken eye for all a moment, she stalked her fingers across the uneven plane, marched in a final few clicks and a button, then sighed alongside the clasp of her screen. Staring dusted binds, whole shelves of mindless voraciousness cramming well over numbness, her head only fell. A hand reached, instantly, a sludge hurling toward her face until seeing, too, the utter reach it was nothing capable of; she needed not a case more to steam into her stiff bristles.

It wasn’t even that she was neglectful. She’d managed plenty—whether in self-etiquette or actual work. The places were dry, the curbing pools were rich harvested; all she ever needed was another glance. Just a breeze of her head, really, where all the tireless grays, the purposeful bays still stood so simply, brushing all the baleful breezes like it was the only color that could never associate itself with such a deed.

Her laptop dreamed all a sigh of its above before being abandoned in the pallor. She was hardly even sure where she was going, herself, but in a moment, she’d found precisely what it was—at a perfect sill to hold an appliance some time or other, she sagged her hands, huffed, and eyed nowhere. As far as nowhere, as reachable, as inexplicably enthralling as nowhere, she stood and stared.

A strand of grass croaked to itself, followed by another, and onward. She leaned laterally. Somewhere among the sidelines, where a shadow could’ve pinched itself without all of her minding the slightest, she fixated her head over some vague hills, rolling thrills lining the endless, mindless plantlife of an eternal corner. She swished again. Among another front, a level trail extended all the same, deep, tiny, relatively, somewhere into the exact line of unlabeled woods. For a moment, some stark sleep sounded the nicest thing fathomable.

Between the stars, she gazed so carefully, tree to tree, so listlessly, dot to dot, as she continued to sigh about every notion recallable. She blinked a prolonged second. Somewhere beyond the exosphere, a planetoid aged in silence, flickering to her, solely—somewhere, a plant twiddled from its direct beneath—and finally, she set her hands flat, her head dripped, and eyed the indefinite darkness on her own will.

It wasn’t even herself, but for once, she couldn’t tell what it was so substantial among the view. To hold such capability, there were uncountable nights to be reheld and sessioned, bidings to be nourished and plummeted until nothing lasted of her own well-being—all considered, she wasn’t even sure what she was trying to fathom it being. Her own eyelids may have been quite the greatest thing to dawn for each sparing moment, but even she knew she could only blink so long under such a shivery substance.

All a moment and the world left to care, she just listed an egg, and stared her mind until the landscape faded back to its eternal shadow. Great, shying wills, perfectly unputrefied planes and elevations to sap, some time or another... she just froze over again.

Beyond verdant blankets across lands, beneath the tricky tries of stellar lights unheard, and atop the shortest hill able to hold such distinguishability, there sat an egg. Among all roles of the wind, it shook.

She finally sighed, parted her hands from their rest, and slogged through her null grounds. Without so much a twitch of her fingers, she groped around the blurry table carrying her laptop until trudging over the blankness she needed, then plodded into the forever before the doorway. A final sigh and a sag to the world, she slid her hands to her sides, drooped alongside her hair, and whirled into the next brink of silence.

Suddenly, she stopped. For a moment, she couldn’t even tell what’d warmed her, but in another gaze around the spinning lab, the exact color breathed again. Stumbling to the correct orientation, she held a hand to her cheek as she blinked long enough to keep herself upright. Among the far forward of the unfathomable corner stood a good-sized, tinted tube, bubbling in all absolutely nothing and itself. A couple else crowded it, but she was hardly focused anymore.

She’d have had the most despisably exasperating look on her face, all giddy and nonchalant as she’d have never been under any decent circumstances, but she didn’t care for reason. Out the first seconds, down, through the rest of the hall and the entry, she slogged into the depths of deepest darkness, only to finally stare nothing of ahead. She almost forgot what she’d been doing, truthfully.

A sudden gust brought her round to the right orientation, and she started so clumsily into the faint distance where the captivating window always led to. It’d have taken more than an incredulous rarity to keep her forward—much less on the right track—but somehow she got everything necessary to stand up the shortest angle of the hill unpopulated, staring into the exact shape of an egg shivering far from the moonlight.

A dropped finger, then her entire form... it was extensively frigid. She reared her face upon latching herself to it. With an unfathomable breath, she twisted back around to where the wind once lulled, the plating of an accommodation that could see as well as she could for all the night. She slid, so smoothly and sluggishly toward wherever she was hoping, dropped somehow into the face of soothing lights—brushed right beyond the first door she just sprang from—and finally slogged into the finest room she’d have liked for the moment to collapse atop her bed.

Tomorrow... just tomorrow...

* * *

Regardless if it’d been an entire twilight trued, some sleep would’ve seemed the greatest feat manageable for ever—had it not been for the blinding sunrise hurling so mesmerizingly. She suddenly woke, twitched before the dawn still emanating its ever spectacle, her face precisely parallel to a dizziness and a dazzle before jolting in place. The blob was already scooting among the wasteland, yet its sight was all the stamp she needed to blink the last against a blazing orb, gasp, and lunge so far she toppled to the ground.

The sphere painted the fleeting light for a moment as it rammed the ground she’d just stood. Staring, prone, she couldn’t even notice how close her specimen was to knocking the rock against her backhand.

“C’mon, that was a perfect shot!” Shadow Marx cried from his stance above. “‘Ay, Blobby, lemme get this one.”

The subordinate just sighed, and pointed toward their entrance with his only free hand of ever. Shadow Marx cackled to the ceiling as she stumbled into balance, then furled his wings forward, a crackling sphere instantly darting through his line of sight. She sidestepped in a moment.

Another bolt spiraled toward, then another, again—finally, she bothered to recall her nonexistent inventory. With an instant of sour warmth to savor as she turned behind another projectile, she followed into a sigh and finally swished around. Immediately, more sparks hailed upon the field far, beside, anywhere but her uncurved path toward the farthest and simultaneously most gratifying door to soothe for all until she could actually reach it.

She was remarkably intact for the straight she was heading, even. Each poorly constructed shot, each pitifully pathetic aim toward the ring of grass and its lining stone spokes, she almost could’ve stopped for a moment to break a merest giddiness. Despite the invisible shivers, eternal whimpers, she bothered a check of her specimen—above all the grained stare, reflected share of eyes so starkly blunt, somehow she felt to turn around to exactly the sun’s gaze that surely wasn’t there.

Surely, she’d known how to reinforce her attire. For all the moment, however, she _surely_ knew the precisest glimpse she was ever to take before the final word of doors so close, a flare so enormous and tangible hurtling behind her back—silently eyeing the blue lump hurling from hold in a pity, itself.

She screamed. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t even see beyond the realm of her eyelids—stark numbness, pure null, all the way down. An enormous cloud thudded alongside her resurfacing, though she was so simultaneously lightheaded and stinging she couldn’t bear look to wherever she’d just tossed her hands.

“Double hex!"

She raised a palm among the stilled sunrise, but it was far little, far late; the whole grounds paled by the turn of an entire new star forth. The gaping hole gazed her back, almost tentatively, contemplating its choice of color between hazing purple and cosmic soil, until she strained the last sight of a perfect pillow in hold and sighed into lifelessness. The puncture of air itself slipped a scale, then a countless civilization of them, together, protruding so far into the sky it led chills down—only to truly slam down a moment after, grasp her with force so feeble against that of mechanism, and sign her whole body into the sky, the lasting contract a final faint against the softest spot of the crags.

“Woohoo! You see that?” He led some air alongside the shivering of luminescence. “Hey, bring the Hefts out here, won’cha? I got places to be, so catch you guys later! Behind closed doors—ooh!”

A vague sheathing arose of the thinnest air, then the whole skies dwindled to a dull moon. Even after the crack of fingers, the graze of an air levitated so near for the moment, she could only struggle among silence.

“I’m only doing—” The subordinate suddenly stamped a hand to his side. “I’d best be lending him some assistance. You guys should probably get going.”

With a repeated snap, the final moonlight dissipated into dark matter.

Even after so long of stillness to revive herself, she could barely lift a finger from her painfully mudded hand. She couldn’t breathe without stinging herself all over. So many times, she attempted so much a blink, but be it the dust in the air or the chilling breeze, something wasn’t cooperating; the whole world stung as a blurry gray, brown all over. After all, it was so, so close...

There sat the slightest mention of blue. She nearly huffed at the sight, but for the moment, she was struggling more with the sense of pain than sight. A finger flew to a whole hunch of her knuckle, then dropped, defeated. The wind breezed back by. With another scrunch of her eyes, she stole a final pant and reared her eyelids as far as they could ever stretch—beside the myriad mire, before the stout door, there sat a prone ovoid, lifeless as herself in such a pale stare.

She almost suffocated herself, but she pressed so much she was let no choice but braindead fortune to continue sustaining her own look. As far as she could see, it wasn’t even blinking—at least, not distinctly enough for her to tell—but she just took all a moment’s glance into her head to see the lining of her flat palms. It was prone to anything, of hers or subterranean’s, it was in such an inexplicable indifference, doubtless, but most of all, it was eyeing her back.

She struggled against concepts and her own breath for some minutes until finally breaking her hand’s energy supply. With a feeble flop, it scooted as far as the wind was willing to carry, then sagged a surrender. She shut her eyes for presumed age, only to suddenly bolt her face open at the distant thumping. The door was so far away, but already, she was scanning the second of land she could see for what life remained among the wasteland.

Beyond a skip and a gooey drool behind, it was still there. She budged another hand forward. There was no path, even, but she couldn’t stop. Mind after mind, second past moment, she begrudged all her dwindling strength into each her fingers for any vague cooperation—if only to the point she could get the motion across—but in all, they just stared, eternally.

“Go.”

She sagged. It followed to fall limper, then shuddered upright on its side.

“Leave,” she whispered, finally, then the door burst so loudly alongside a hurling of steps she was instantly floored.

The grass panted under so many flattenings, but she couldn’t tell what was supposed to be a hand or a foot, even. A soothing warmth flew under her, then another pair alongside a distant crowd of hands, and she flung into the air with only a breath to savor for herself. Down a single step, then another in perfect coordination, she finally breathed, blinked, and sighed with the otherworldly travel of her body.

Then there was the surest glance—a pale blue, wobbling upright. It backed a single instant for as long as she could see, then she drew limp in their hold. Somewhere, it’d be safe. The analysis could wait, even, sometime until beyond confines. After all... it was only a native.

It was scurrying, rearing, first, then bumbling off, as far as its puny palms and feeble fingers could touch, as long and tirelessly as some upright stature she could’ve never possessed. Sometime, it’d make it across the rest of the dome-room—somewhere where the blob also stood, even. She was fine, herself; just a drop of her head, a sigh of her own fingers toward the ground was all she minded.

Somehow, it’d be as fine as she was—carried through a familiar swish in the breeze, hefted across an unforgettable click among the enormous doorway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone's favorite OC underling from this work (also the _only_ one, but that's besides the point) got a really neat artwork by [thea apianæ](https://thea-apianae.carrd.co/)! Check it out: [goombeetle-appreciation.tumblr.com/post/642220226939895808](https://goombeetle-appreciation.tumblr.com/post/642220226939895808/assistantparallel-magolor-oc-by-nullbubby-art)
> 
> I made a Discord ([discord.gg/Z4yF5thyeU](https://discord.gg/Z4yF5thyeU)), too. Maybe come check it out?


	3. Fort Stoneheart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doors and dazzles await with eye, stations among an endless bide.
> 
> ...where to?

The gateway spiraled its gaze from all wheres. It was so slow, so silent, so mesmerizingly disparate from the angles of reach, the sheer measure of time between rock and fossil—a cavern of unrivaled illusion, itself. It tore through sound, it shattered the mere breaks of skips and scuttling, all the way until his first thrash of hand, his only attempt to reach at all.

He slapped flat to the ground. A bound flew through the sidelines, the flat fork of darkness and rock together ripping the ability to blink from his eyes. His palm shook without his hand. An enormous doom thumped from the rear of an even deeper darkness, echoing, turning the heads of limp stone itself. He tried reaching again, only to fall to another squish.

His back screeched, suddenly, and his face tore upright—there was green light. A palm splashed into the shallow grass, and he crept forward until the wind smashed him to the floor a second later. The grass spikes instantly reached up, writhed around in his gaze to nowhere for a shiver and an exposure of a well he couldn’t bear consider anymore. He could even _see_ the wood.

Steps crowed to him until his sheer revival; he exploded upright to nearly just stumble to a slope again. Frigid stares, a splintering barkface—the wood just stared him back until the wrath of an enormous, goggly pair of eyes loomed into obstruction. Another step traced of behind. He stopped as the gooey beast scooted toward the trunk, almost shoving him down. It gawked. He bunched his fingers into a palm. The stamps were so nigh they were rolling under his very breath.

A tongue flung through the air, into the bar across the wooden panel, and out showed an entire cavity through the wall the blob couldn’t bear resist. He almost turned back; he almost drifted, even. He shivered as he stared the blue back through the narrow chamber. The approachers stamped closer, shining an entire storm across him, but only when it resonated real did he finally think to move.

Through the stonewall corridor—stabbing winds, all the way—he made it seconds before collapsing again. The entrance exploded of behind. He tried reaching again, he tried twiddling fingers among each other just to see he was capable of it, but it was nothing; he scathed the ground with his palm like a boulder in the breeze. A blue face skipped and twirled ahead, on contrary a wild scurrying kept bursting toward, but all of a sudden, he just shut his eyes, scrunched up, and wept.

Then there was nothing.

It took until his back pained again could he see, though he hadn’t a clue where to look. He shivered to nothing, he didn’t blink so a pebble could come along for its duty, but all that existed was a rising blue hump.

The stick scratched his head, then suddenly disappeared behind his wince and an impossible tongue’s smack. There was a snap of a twig to a trunk’s stead, then the scuttling stopped to make way for a higher, squishier bound. He attempted rearing at the next crack and awe, only to just wheeze and reach a hand to where his head stung.

He barely turned around in time to see the facelessness of a being so colossal—towering the same level as the blue blob—so stiff in waddly feet, so stunned in the final moments before its stark eye and greenish form fell right into a monstrous gape. The blob reached and scratched its own head with its tongue among the haze.

He picked himself up after the next chilliest breezes. A creak fell from behind; he jumped, spun, and sparred breaths with the wall while he stammered among the blurry world enveloping. He almost saw his own shadow in the wooden firelight.

The gooey being skipped into the wall some five times more, then gaped all around with its tongue. He spun his hand back, nearly scathing himself on one his wall’s stands of fire. The shut bark eyeing him from back, dulls, burning pledges standing from everywhere, he stared the ground long enough to notice where he wasn’t headed—the darkness still wrapping him.

He scampered so suddenly down the hall, against the wall, he nearly tumbled right into the next rockface. He wheezed some more against the line’s fork. Somewhere, a blue bounding continued its march, farther by each instant he continued biding. Rubbing his eyes, nearly collapsing under the weight of his own robes, he tumbled toward without second thought.

The gooey being just stamped onward without face—he was fumbling too much to notice even its color, but a dedicated way would’ve sounded the nicest thing. Its tongue twisted alongside it, hurling equal drools to the enclosed skies of nothing. He was so far behind it, already, but he didn’t dare reconsider.

Stumbling so fast, he suddenly lost himself. Slapping another hand against the wall—the scrape of some wood patch so unfathomably comforting—a hollowness thudded a response, and he huffed. He limped forward, only for his stomach to hurl more dizziness from the world. He couldn’t eye back, anymore. He couldn’t see, anymore. He gasped for breath, nearly let a drop spill from his mouth. His hands locked, and a stiff spoke stepped aboard his back, a shadow’s blink towering from right behind, but somehow, he scraped by with only whimpers.

The slit cleared long enough for light to somehow burst through, and he exploded so far forward—out from darkness’ flare. He fell right to the ground, but he was more than prepared. With some more haze spat to the scathing soil, whines spent to his coarse course, he sapped all the rest of his strength out for another second into the skies, free from rungs of his own stinging head and the coldness of a blinding rear, ever-nigh.

Something clacked; he shivered against another trunk. The pebble skipped right by him, under his lackluster shadow and into eyes of aged blaze. He lapped a first drink, and nearly looked back. The blob skipped on without him. He was keeping up horrendously, but the herd of silence bumped him so suddenly he scurred across the rock-splintered wall with only blue on mind.

The gooey being gazed all around—soiling him to an upright puddle by whirl—until settling over his very writing chest. It threw its tongue, bouncing its eyes, then exploded toward. Instantly, he lashed his hands out, and somehow he groped a cold stub of the wooden wall before gravity’s full plot. He was enough a hanging apple by the time it arrived to settle himself, though for all a creak could contend him, still, he couldn’t see its departure.

Another was already being attempted by his revival—a skip and a hop, then again. Across the huge hole, walls exploded into obstructions, huge gazers gaping to him with only cares he could see so well; all that existed was the most putrid water he couldn’t dare taint himself. He was soaked in the silence as he started again, trembling stiff before every breath. So hardly close, he nigh smashed one of his audience with such tossed attention.

He tried reaching forward, but they never stopped. They didn’t creak, but they loomed—almost twice his height. Things like bars over them, they squeaked their frost splinters unrivaled, they cracked spires from the towering targets above, eternal flames. They didn’t care his attention to his only hands of ever, not his breath expelled to never avail, nor anything he could’ve hoped to attempt in their favor; it was water, all over.

Then... there _was_ something to drink.

He sipped, all the way. Every bark faced him, he trembled. He almost wanted to slap himself back to the floor, muster his hands to nothing to take a gaze into the eternal burners so curious, but there was an audience. There was something he couldn’t satisfy—whether to complement darkness, even, sounded the nicest thing to consider.

There was a skip behind the farthest dark. He shook, and bunched his hands between his only wall and his chest. Something bounced. He mustered a breath, then another. Something echoed from wherever he’d just lost his last sense of sight. His hands picked around himself, pricking by each print his fingers twitched among, as the sole, faintest light crept to a pole in the blindness. It was no less than a second until the creak passed, but he was an ice fossil long before.

Bright beads, spined sticks, all the way, the blob just bounded through the entrance, stood for some skips and spit, and reemerged licking its head. The wood thudded without its input—under the spoils of its situation, he hardly sniffled enough to follow, much less turn at all.

His stomach writhed in conjunction with a tear. A hand clumped, instantly, rose its very face to the sound of all its source, only to utterly crack against a wind and sear among its seers. He finally blinked. There was a whole hole dazzling him, a cavity to forever seethe above, but he was long gone into the pit; there was no looking up anymore.

Time itself had surrendered; he was an inhabitant of its wrath. _He_ was the only other basking in the strike of heat he didn’t even deserve. Behind the wooden world of a stare and a goggle forever, he’d plummeted. His hands were lost. His eyes were fallen into their drift. For another second spared, a terror shaken of planked thunder, he spattered his own breaths from their cold storage, not a life between his hand and another, and blinked his last seconds away from the unfading void.

More creaks were cracked, blights from the very tips of his head to his ears, and finally, it’d had enough. With a line so much more direct than it could’ve spoken, the blob skipped right by, into him, and shoved all the last sense of height he’d ever had over nothing into a ditch as he hovered across the endless stone.

Right into another bark, he nearly tumbled at the sight—the gooey being was unfazed, licking the wall right out. It shoved him in. The stark pallors froze him, piled to the stone sky and back, but it just didn’t care. His eyes strayed further every pass as he burst aboard the circling charge around the room, the pallid maze, so much he couldn’t make a corner from a shadow by when he tore into the tallest pile.

He exploded off and into the floor. Already, the bounding was embering again. He was staticized. He couldn’t budge his fingers if he wanted; the last energy he’d ever had was sapped. Deeper, damper, colder, the eternal wisps felled their guidance upon him, but he didn’t dare break from the frost.

The frail boxes thrashed, and rain raged; every droplet flocked to his back for its only comfort. He winced so many times, but soon, it didn’t even matter anymore—another breath, and he whimpered. His whines shattered against the roaring waves of above, and, as he sagged to a true puddle, his eye lost its hundredth dweller.

It hurt—his back, head, and hands, they couldn’t stand the weather any longer. The heat burned in its nonexistence, a sudden rock flew over his chest, his back, and his head, all over, so all he could do was stop under the crashing and tumbling of an entire forest upon him. He could see it so gently, all of a sudden... it was so blinding, so mesmerizingly smooth, simple, and scorching, but he didn’t care for morality.

The next flurry fell, but he couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t lift his fingers from his hands anymore. It was so loud—it was so hard to try any longer, but somehow he kept gasping. Somewhere, in the remnants of broken spires, the greatest challengers of pile-highs to the scorching skies, a calmest heat broke over, then a tear, almost a wipe of his eye as he continued shivering in the most miserable corner.

Behind the reckless charges and back smashes, an unpaled shadow, there was a whine of pink so sudden he had no choice but to tuck his hands in, reface the floor, and cry all his fullest.

* * *

Perfectly unworn, just fluffed enough for disregard, all was sublime. Matters were nonexistent for the morning, looks all negligible, and comfort was absolute. Her hands were so limp, pressed, and warm she truly didn’t mind the lack of a sheet for substitute an oddly enthralling cushion, bordering herself from the bed she could hardly consider herself even on. Of course, there _was_ some test tube in need of its prime audience, but with all another breath swelled, she couldn’t see to bother.

Her pillow shook, shoring some tainted heat to her face. She lifted her head, sighed, then rubbed an eye. A faint wall greeted her. With a few stagnant blinks, she pressed a hand to the pillowy ground, stretching the other. Blurriness tainted the view until she finally sagged, then she tapped a palm to her face and reached with her other hand—she wasn’t even bothering with support, doubtless, but at very least she didn’t mind the fall much.

She winced with the landing. Her pillow puffed in response, though only upon the air breaching contact did she look it deeper. She stole a breath, herself, and shot upward. After collecting herself off the bed, peeking between the limp cushion, a stark gaze, and her bed wrongfully occupied, she smashed the light switch. Fumbling barely nigh the void of her sidelined cabinet, she flung a drawer outward, a cold-stinging grip hurled from its hold, and darted her hand around the borders of a blurry blue.

It instantly halted its scuttling at the sight. Its head fell frozen, its hands locked over the mess made of her bed’s prime sheets, then it blinked its last. She didn’t budge. Panting so long, so intently in the savoring gray that just didn’t mind the commotion, she couldn’t bother to see past her blaster—right to a live mirror of a lifeless, vaguely egg-shaped form.

Somehow her hands loosened. Her blaster fell into a singular palm, then beyond her waist as she noticed her own tightness. Its face still hadn’t moved, blinked, or even shivered. It was breathing, still.

By her return, it still hadn’t shook its head from against the wall—some half a second upon her contact with the bed, its gaze fell to the ceiling. She neared enough to notice its chest rise once to her; she was fully leaned by the next second. Her shadow splayed across its decorated blue shape. It stared her back. She poked a finger nigh its veiled face. Nothing happened. With a hand struck against the wall, she fell to the bed and dropped a rod to its forehead.

A second torn, the beep recalled her grip, and she sat on the edge of the cushion. By moments and beyond, she stared the nothing of a flickering light on the device’s tiny screen, a faint, endless panting sputtering of behind; it took until a rear of her face until she recognized the necessitation of her tablet. Still, it was breathing.

She stood, then a buzzing instantly struck her. She peeked downward, toward her outfit she of course hadn’t changed from the prior evening. Whether once, whether however many times she was to be recognized by her name, for a moment she simply wished to sigh an entire breath over the next face she met.

There was a guest to greet.

* * *

Surely, he could’ve made the acquaintanceship. He could make black from blue—he’d just keep reminding himself—a tint of wisp on a horrid eye from any other mound of the pallid collective. He was littered with so many, squashed, fragile, intact, and whatnot other to destruct him, but despite how much he should’ve seen the damage, he couldn’t blink. He couldn’t even stand if he wanted to.

Somehow, he was spared. The boxes doubtlessly cared, their plotted doom ready before any spot not his, but the most he was afflicted was a brush of a corner. The air whispered alongside, to with cold, from with fret and tears—anything to sap of his very eyes to whatever sky—the doom spires fallen long before its wrath, but he was fine. He was far warm enough.

It was just so soft.

That one moved, he didn’t even mind. It could’ve been the wind, and he wouldn’t have cared; there might’ve been darkness’ appeal that he couldn’t tell. None mattered. Under a simmered sky, its shivery lines and coldest aura, his chest cried with its deepest, faintest longing it never deserved, and he breathed, still.

A draft flew to his littered shelter; he shook to the softness. Something squished, then slid, then sighed all the way by, to his very eye. He tasted his own breath for all he could prolong it, then settled on spit when plethora came to exhaustion. He tightened his hands—nigh breaking them, they were so stiff. In a subtler gash across the ground, there was a creak.

He whimpered. Nothing happened; he whimpered again. A box slid, suddenly, then stopped from its fleeting departure. He shut his eyes even tighter than they ever could’ve—there was no response. Everything fell darker, then his fingers writhed, tapping ripples across the static pond crept too near his back. He could feel it, doubtless, he could hear the whisper so close, the dreamscape never envisioned, but he couldn’t budge from his freezing rest.

Then he whined.

He whined again, only to be instantly shushed by a swish and a perfect, if not soothier emulation. All of a sudden, his hands fell so far they could brush the ground from his sky, and his eyelids drooped their last droplets. A sway churned across the place of his head, a descendent from the stars themselves, just to swab and poke, faint and stroke the very tingling atop himself, and he sagged.

A blobby skip rose, though his eyelids barely crossed the halfway mark before being lulled by another patting. He wore a heavy blink, then another for the next hint of warmth, barely suiting himself long enough to see the most eased sway of a stark red, swishing, calling his hands to nag it as it carried him out the darkest place he’d ever seen. Another plop nearly startled him, though he was so warm, pressed, and comfortable he couldn’t dare consider another glimpse from the perfect platform aboard his back.

It was so much warmer; that, he liked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, it's been forever since I've written ~~Mags~~ this lil' buddo. Now that I'm finally back to it, I kinda get why I managed so much of Upside Down Below and Tech for Breakfast done in the past, cuz dang it's been neat writing this stuff, if not outright enjoyable.
> 
> Pretty dark round those chambers, ain't it? I sure do wonder who could be lurking... ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

**Author's Note:**

> I got a few things to mention regarding this being a rewrite, this work's series, and other whatnot.
> 
> First up, yes, this will take the place of Upside Down Below when this is finished—keyword " **when** ". I'm rewriting this mainly because I'm unsatisfied with the direction I took with the former work, how much I strayed from my original concept just so I could write this one sentence I thought would be pretty cool or whatever. And sure, there are options to simply justify that later on, or whatever—that's the magic of writing, after all—but freggen poop it there's too much wrong. I'm slamming this in its place as soon as this is finished.
> 
> Also reflecting on that previous note: Tech for Breakfast is likely to receive the same treatment on its first few chapters or so. They'll also be rewritten from scratch. I'm expecting to get to that immediately after I finish this work, though maybe I'll just decide to ignore that plan entirely and leave it as is. I dunno yet.
> 
> In simpler terms, this is essentially the roadmap I'll be sticking to:  
> \- Finish this rewrite.  
> \- Smack Upside Down Below ~~into the poop zone~~ out from A Marvelous Mage's/Tech for Breakfast's continuity.  
> \- Rewrite whatever opening of Tech for Breakfast I decide on (likely the first five chapters).  
> \- Finally continue updating Tech for Breakfast.


End file.
